On October 24th and 25, 2015, my 12-year-old son Jesse and I made our second annual pilgrimage to Slipknot’s giant, weekend-long heavy metal festival Knotfest. The event once again took place at San Manuel Amphitheater at Glen Helen Regional Park in San Bernardino, California. This is a recap of our experiences on Saturday, October 24.

The event actually kicks off on Friday night with a show just for those who are fortunate enough to be holding camping or VIP passes. We were not among those folks, so we missed out on Sepultura, The Faceless, and several others. A bit of a bummer, but nothing compared to the gut-wrenching decisions that we would have to make later in the weekend with so many quality bands performing opposite each other on the side stages (more on that in a few…).

At the conclusion of last year’s edition of Knotfest, Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor promised the crowd that the weekend-long metal festival would be returning to San Bernadino, CA again this year. Well, it seems Taylor is a man of his word because it has been announced that the massive and eclectic production will, in fact, once again invade the grounds of the San Manuel Amphitheater and Glen Helen Regional Park October 23rd-25th.

Friday, October 23rd will once again have a small show exclusively for those purchasing 3-day camping passes. The lineup for this night has yet to be announced. However, the Saturday and Sunday lineups have been mostly announced and they do not disappoint! Details here below.

Sharon Osbourne, wife and manager of Ozzy Osbourne, has just released a video announcing that Ozzfest will be returning to Japan later this year. She also casually dropped the bombshell that Black Sabbath‘s headlining slot on the second night of the festival will be the band’s farewell performance.

Watch the announcement video here below.

Ozzy himself had previously stated that the band would record one more album and do one last tour. No word, as yet, on whether those plans are still on. Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi has been undergoing treatments for lymphoma since 2012. His health issues did not derail the band from releasing the critically acclaimed comeback album 13.

At a recent tour stop in London, England, Corey Taylor and Jim Root of Slipknot joined tour mates Korn on stage for a surprise cover version of The Beastie Boys classic song “Sabotage.” As evidenced in the fan footage below, the live cover was a high energy affair that brought down the house.

Korn and Slipknot are currently on tour together along with Flint, MI, band King 810 on the Prepare For Hell Tour. If you haven’t seen them yet, you still can on the few remaining dates in the following locations…

In what might be the worst idea of the week, everybody’s favorite punching bag band Asking Alexandria and Korn-hole Jonathan Davis teamed up to butcher the Duran Duran classic “Hungry Like the Wolf” the other night at the Alternative Press Awards.

Be forewarned, you will never be able to un-hear this if you click play on the video here below. I warned you! And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to take a shower to try and wash this stink off.

Kornâ€™s third album, the breakthrough Follow The Leader is part of the deal and you can pick it up (well, download it) for only $5 (the CD is available for $8.55).

Containing the essential Korn tracks like â€œFreak On A Leashâ€ and â€œGot The Life,â€ lead singer Jonathan Davis was at his darkest most introspective best with the haunting â€œPrettyâ€ and â€œDead Bodies Everywhere.â€ The clacking slap-bass of Reginald â€˜Fieldyâ€™ Arvizu, the heavy, abrasive guitars of Brian â€˜Headâ€™ Welch and James â€˜Munkyâ€™ Shaffer and the crushing drums of David Silveria really came together for their best album. Korn was trying to regenerate metal and further the influences of hip hop within the genre and came up with a monster of an album.

Browse all 1,000 albums on sale this month for only $5 each, as well as several albums on sale this week for only $2.99 each.

Amazon currently has 100 MP3 Albums For $5 Each for the month of December 2011, so today’s the last day to grab the items in this sale. There’s plenty of great music from artists like Nine Inch Nails, Dio, Beck, Bruce Springsteen, and more, as well as soundtracks for Tron: Legacy and Book Of Mormon.

Below is a sample of some of the albums in this $5 sale, so grab it now before it’s over at 11:59pm PST tonight!

The official website for Gibson guitars has released what they perceive to be the top 50 metal songs of all time. Gibson.com’s writers and editors worked on compiling the list over several weeks, releasing 10 entries at a time, and recently released the top 10, which declared the number one metal song to be “Master of Puppets” by Metallica.

In some ways, the number one spot for Metallica is fitting, considering 2011 is the 25th anniversary of the release of their Master of Puppets album. Having said that though, metalheads are notorious for having fierce and strong opinions about what they consider to be their “top songs,” on top of their fierce and strong opinions about what bands are or are not even metal.

Time to put the “X in Sex” and explode with a “Sonic Boom” like the “God of Thunder” — the band KISS is releasing new KISS Kondoms for fans to stay safe when they’re taking their significant others for a “Rocket Ride.”

Apologies for the song title puns used here, but c’mon… this is KISS and it’s a story about Gene Simmons pimping out some condoms — I just couldn’t help myself.

The difference with this release of KISS Kondoms is that they have pictures on them, which is kind of odd when you think about where these things are going to end up when you’re done using them.